Obstacles and Perseverance (March 23)

I imagine with anyone’s PCT thru hike attempt, there are a sea of obstacles to move through, over, under, and around, just to get to the start of the trail. This was certainly true for me, a story for another day.

But once started, there are a new set of obstacles, some expected, others random. Here on Thursday March 23rd, my Plan A is already in the trash bin. I hoped to cover 77 miles over 5 days and then execute on a long-planned trip to Las Vegas before resuming the trail on Tuesday March 28th for the long haul. Instead, I made it 2 days and 20 miles, a twin prong of sickness and weather. A felt the sore throat the eve of my start. Annoying, but no fever, no COVID. But by the end of the second day, I was shot, much more than my physical conditioning (not ideal, not terrible) implied.

The weather forecast was another unprecedented SoCal storm (for late March) so at least the twin prong made my decision easy. When I unfurled my tent back in Palm Springs and indoors, soaking wet from the first night of the trail, I could not imagine doing this on a frigid raining sideways day on the trail as my cold worsened. Returning to Palm Springs Monday night, there was an additional physical obstacle of flooding through the wash that runs down the Coachella, driving 40 minutes out of the way to get to our destination.

Tuesday was a rest day, but I thought my cold was manageable enough to try a fully loaded hike on one of the Palm Springs area trails I like on Wednesday. I took my pack over to Indian Canyons and then up the trail to Murray Hill, a 2,200 foot peak that overlooks the valley. I felt OK to start, but rapidly went down hill – thinking my pack (which still seems to heavy for this journey) was about twice the weight as my pace slowed down to less than 2 mph. Part of it was the illness, but I felt like a leaden sloth moving up the hill. I cut out the additional side loop to cut this 10 miler to just a 7.5 mile round trip. I was even slower on the decent and had to sit down with a mile to go and hang my head between my legs.

I dragged myself back to base and then researched how the next leg might look after the coming 3 day Vegas interlude: I’m going to flip flop the flip flop. The plan for leg 2 going southbound from Kennedy Meadows (mile 702) is out. It’s snowed in even worse there and much of the first 100 miles is above 6,000 feet and this latest storm has just ended that being a better option. So, I’ll instead just try again from where I left off, northbound from Mile 20, illness behind me and the relentless march towards warmth and longer days my ally with the skies…

When I think of perseverance in the face of ridiculousness, I often think of this scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when the local lord tells Lancelot how he picked a terrible spot for a castle, but kept on building until it endured. The YouTube clip is great, but the passage:

“When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that’s what you’re going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.”